What is the effect of tainting a resource in Terraform?

• A. It marks the resource for recreation on the next apply
• B. It deletes the resource immediately
• C. It upgrades the resource version
• D. It exports the resource to a remote state

Answer: (A)

Tainting a resource marks it as tainted in Terraform’s state, signaling that the current instance should be replaced. When you run the next apply, Terraform will plan to destroy the existing resource and create a new one to satisfy the configuration. This is useful when a resource is in a bad or drifted state and needs to be rebuilt from scratch. It isn’t an immediate deletion, and it doesn’t upgrade versions or export to remote state. If you change your mind, you can untaint it to cancel the planned replacement.